How Forbes Got 42% More Readers to Turn Off Ad Blockers, and 6 Other Intriguing Stats

Lots of digital-marketing data already during CES week

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas runs through Saturday, and there's marketing data aplenty being released due to the huge event, especially on the connected-car front. There are more than a few of such stats below, but we kick off our first numbers crunch of 2016 with a fascinating case study from Forbes.

1. In a Jan. 5 post, Forbes chief products officer Lewis DVorkin explains how his publication recently began asking readers with ad-blocking software to turn it off. Forbes offered them an "ad-light experience," as DVorkin wrote in his column. He reported that from Dec. 17 to Jan. 3, 42.4 percent of Forbes visitors (903,000 of 2.1 million) who were asked to turn their ad blockers off did so, and then received the ad-light reading experience—and a thank you message.

2. A new Autotrader study found that consumers are slowly warming up to the idea of self-driving cars. In 2015, 60 percent believed they were dangerous versus 65 percent the year prior. Meanwhile, 70 percent of 1,012 people surveyed said they were more likely to consider a car with autonomous features such as parking assist, traffic-jam guidance, lane warnings and collision avoidance. Check out more related stats here.

3. In November, in-car users spent more than 33 hours listening to Pandora. That's 57 percent more than the streaming-music service's average listener. Already, 14 million consumers have come to Pandora thanks to partnerships with automakers including Ford, Honda and Subaru, covering 160 models. "Automotive is our fastest-growing listening category," Geoff Snyder, Pandora's vp of business development, told Adweek.

5. General Motors yesterday revealed it's investing $500 million in the car-service app Lyft in a move to beat its competitors to the self-driving future.

6. The unseasonably warm weather between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day was reportedly tough on brick-and-mortar retailers in the final weeks of 2015, though MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse found an overall holiday retail sales growth of 7.9 percent over last year thanks to online spending, per Retail Dive, which also said MasterCard's research division stated e-commerce sales were up 20 percent.

7. The National Peanut Board pushed out 366 pieces of content on Monday, posting roughly every two minutes for 12 hours. "It's sort of like the Farmer's Almanac of social media," said Ryan Lepicier, senior vp of marketing and communications for the National Peanut Board. "We see it as an opportunity to shift gears from a traditional approach that focused on print and outdoor advertising to a campaign that we felt like consumers could really get excited about."